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No, Russia Isn't Going To Steal The Internet

Opposition is growing to US government plans to give up technical oversight of the internet. The Republican Party is calling for a year’s delay to the handover process, and some are suggesting that it could allow Russia or China to seize control.

Last month, it was announced that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit corporation created by the US Commerce Department, would hand over the reins to a new body in September next year.

However, the Republican Party is up in arms about the proposals – and yesterday, the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee voted to put the DOTCOM Act through to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for consideration, potentially blocking the transfer of power for a year.

Republican subcommittee chairman Greg Walden commented: “We should at least pause long enough to have an independent nonpartisan body we all respect look over whatever [the administration] comes back with and say, ‘What effect does it have?”

ICANN head office, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So far, so good. But, he added, “We know what China has done to silence dissent, and we’ve read the statements of Vladimir Putin who wants to use the powers of the ITU [International Telecommunications Union] to control the internet. These threats are real.”

Committee chair Republican Bob Goodlatte piled in, claiming: “The reality is that once we surrender our unique possession, it will be impossible to take it back if something goes awry.”

The pair are presumably concerned about statements Putin made two years ago in which he suggested “establishing international control over the internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union” and pointed out that “Russia was one of its co-founders and intends to be an active member.”

FoxFox News has had a field day with the issue, with guest co-host Gregg Jarrett suggesting that China and Russia would in future be able to control the internet – and that the UN would be taxing it.

But all this is scaremongering. There’s been no suggestion that ICANN’s role should be handed over to the ITU – indeed, in its call for public input, ICANN specifically states that it “would not accept a proposal that replaces the [National Telecommunications and Information Administration] NTIA role with a government-led or an inter-governmental organization solution.” In other words, the ITU and UN have been ruled out of the running.

“Those who fear an ‘ITU takeover’ or, even less plausibly, a ‘Putin takeover’ or ‘Chinese takeover’ of the root are completely unable to provide plausible scenarios by which this could happen because of the end of the NTIA contract,” says Brendan Kuerbis of the Internet Governance Project (IGP).

“How exactly does the absence of NTIA in the root zone modification loop suddenly make an intergovernmental treaty regulating ICANN more likely than it already is? And how exactly does the [Internet Assigned Numbers Authority] IANA contract prevent Russian tanks from rolling into Los Angeles, where ICANN is headquartered?”

While some countries have indeed attempted to place internet governance issues under the remit of the UN – and are expected to try again at the International Telecommunication Union Plenipotentiary Conference this October – the proposed changes wouldn’t make this any more likely. As NTIA assistant secretary for communications and information Lawrence Strickling told the subcommittee yesterday, “The ICANN-convened process that is currently underway will help prevent authoritarian countries from exerting too much influence over the internet by promoting the multistakeholder model that has made the internet the success it is today.”

What’s odd is that the move is being met with such surprise – after all, as long ago as 1998, the Commerce Department declared that the eventual plan was for the private sector to take leadership for DNS management. Indeed, this plan was behind the creation of ICANN in the first place; the Commerce Department was only ever involved in order to maintain ICANN’s stability.

Meanwhile, the row is doing nothing to reassure the world that the US should be trusted with oversight of the domain name system. Quite the reverse, indeed.

As Kuerbis points out: “Nothing mobilizes support among the world’s governments for a stronger ITU role in internet governance or a more nationalistic approach than the sight of the US Congress beating its chest about American exceptionalism and its unilateral right to supervise global internet infrastructure.”

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